Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

cryptoslate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 577 posts

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#411

Post by staticassertion »

UIGYUIUYG wrote: post #298
ljm wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or where you do the equivalent of stuffing cash under your mattress by hiding the password to your cryptowallet inside a safe, or using one of the various incantations of writing your password on a post-it note. Sure, the vast potential of reward justifies the added risk. But I'm also not in the US, I'm not rabidly anti-government, and I don't want to store my money under my floorboards. Good, old-fashioned, regulate…

> by hiding the password to your cryptowallet inside a safe, or using one of the various incantations of writing your password on a post-it note. This is the scariest bit about crypto by far and that I will not deny. This is why whilst I don't trust banks, they do have big safes with locked boxes in. Using these with shamir backups is what protects my assets, and worst case scenario my private key is also split in tw…

> This is why whilst I don't trust banks, they do have big safes with locked boxes in.

This doesn't matter at all. Banks will hand your money over during a robbery - it's policy and it happens often. What matters is that banks have insurance and legal infrastructure to deal with theft. When a bank is robbed insurance covers the loss, the FBI begins investigations, etc. The lockboxes are for show (I worked in a bank, no one will tell you otherwise).

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#412

Post by UweSchmidt »

fleddr wrote: post #362
SavantIdiot wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd: HN is made up of the people closest to cutting-edge technology on the planet, and yet sentiment is negative on cryptocurrency. Hmmm...

It's odd indeed. This is a VC-created forum where its users reject entire sectors of new technology. Besides being anti-crypto, there also anti-google, anti-iot, and anti-any website looking fancier than something from 1996. It's a thing to accept and be entertained by I guess. The stunning lack of self awareness over here is legendary though.

Let's see:

- Google: monopolistic tendencies, decline of their search engine, copyright troubles for youtubers, overall bad execution with their projects recently.

- iot: really bad security and privacy, otherwise it would be neat.

- modern websites: gauntlet of cookie banners and modals, ads and surveillance are criticized, page weight often silly, but the capabilities of modern websites are generally appreciated here.

- crypto: enables ransomware and other crime, insane energy use, bad track record of ponzi schemes and hacked services, speculation vehicle with few winners, not generally used/usable for real payments; blockchain-based services not feasible (oracle problem, if possible then killer apps would have appeared, a Hello World program requires mining and melts your CPU, etc.)

Did I sum up HN's sentiment correctly? Could you point out where the lack of self awareness lies?

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#413

Post by Retric »

rawtxapp wrote: post #261
Retric wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many major bugs in software and especially cryptosystems went undisclosed for decades? The core issue is the inherent asymmetry where 1 person finding 1 bug can destabilize giant systems. Even if these systems where hundreds of years old that doesn’t actually mean much.

How many bugs had a direct financial return in the same way? If you found a bug in maker (or any of the other big contracts) today, you can walk away with billions of dollars worth of coins, that's a huge sum.

Major bugs in smart contracts can cause the system to stop working rather than handing anyone billions. As such people can discover such issues without disclosing them in much the way infrastructure can be vulnerable without people damaging it.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#414

Post by Retric »

seibelj wrote: post #307
DanHulton wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the classic example is the original binary search algorithm. It had an overflow bug that went undetected for two decades: https://thebittheories.com/the-curious-case-of-binary-search... It's an incredibly simple algorithm and still got missed. Smart contracts have no chance.

There was not $Billions to be paid out for finding that - it's a matter of incentives.

Not every way to break a smart contract results in a major payout.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#415

Post by kube-system »

Symbiote wrote: post #290
ConcernedCoder wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can there ever be 'bug free' software? As a lifelong programmer, I'm starting to think that it's impossible to write perfect software free from bugs.

In some cases, yes. See Software Verification [1] for some pointers. It's massively more expensive, so you'll see it used in aerospace, railway signalling, some vehicles (trains, components of some cars), power generation and distribution, industrial processes. Sometimes also in consumer products that have long warranties and are extremely expensive to recall/repair, like washing machines. Just yesterday was a post o…

Software verification can make a system ≈ bug free from a pragmatic perspective, but, there are still holes: humans do the verification, and there are practical limitations to the scope of system and integration tests. The fact that we still find zero-days (and other bugs) on systems that have gone through software verification is evidence of this.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#416

Post by xur17 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #231
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #164

There are more than $100b of stablecoins — 285x year-over-year growth — with a variety of very interesting and high-quality stablecoins proliferating. And of course, Hacker News focuses on some garbage project nobody in the space even followed. How is there no discussion about FRAX, Maker's DAI, USDC, CRV's 3pool token, Liquity's LUSD, and so many other interesting projects?

Because there's nothing interesting about them. They're just another variation on the same ol' "we peg our value to the dollar(*)!" pitch. The interesting stuff happens when they fail.

They all do the same thing (peg to the dollar), but in different ways with different tradeoffs. That's the interesting part that you're completely missing.

Some are more centralized than others. Some rely on governance more than others. Some allow themselves to drift further from the peg than others. Some are more complex (and therefore more at risk of failure). There's actually quite a lot going on, and I personally find it pretty interesting, but yeah, at the surface, it's a bunch of coins that trade fairly close to $1.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#417

Post by wyager »

solomonb wrote: post #274
wyager wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible, but approximately no one in the shitcoin industry knows or cares enough to write fully formally verified programs.

Are there even any dependently typed smart contract languages that would allow you to encode and carry proofs in your contracts? Without that I think the best you could do is model your program in some other formal verification system and then convince yourself that your model matches the actual contract.

The Simplicity language is good. I’m sure there are other designs.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#418

Post by Dylan16807 »

__s wrote: post #346
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A relatively unknown, recently launched stablecoin collapsing is not big news in crypto. The fact that some people think a $250,000 heist followed by the collapse of a half a million dollar stablecoin is "not news" underscores how ridiculous the cryptocurrency space is right now.

VCs blowing an order of magnitude more on coke doesn't make the news

If someone blows millions of dollars on coke I very much want to read that article. Why would that not get reported, are you sure?

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#419

Post by charwalker »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #164

There are more than $100b of stablecoins — 285x year-over-year growth — with a variety of very interesting and high-quality stablecoins proliferating. And of course, Hacker News focuses on some garbage project nobody in the space even followed. How is there no discussion about FRAX, Maker's DAI, USDC, CRV's 3pool token, Liquity's LUSD, and so many other interesting projects?

I don't put money in gambling on assets underwritten by nothing. If I want a rush I'll buy AMC or something with real world value.

The hype drives the coins but the only people getting rich are those in early then motivated to tell people to buy. It's a decentralized pyramid scheme and even those work some of the time.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#420

Post by throwaway4good »

delusional wrote: post #407
throwaway4good wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is really Ethereum and the language Solidity. Chuck full of gotchas and completely horrible to work with. The mechanics of stable coins is really trivial and thusly should be trivial to implement and validate. Unfortunately it is not, and it is sad that the hype and investment rush inside the broader crypto field does not foster languages and platforms that actually are suitable for the few realworld…

How are they trivial? From my limited knowledge they are basically trying to stabilize a speculative asset using another speculative asset. To me it seems like an essentially impossible task.

Yeah. In theory they are broken.

But in practice they can work for a while.

They work by taking a collateral and splitting in two. The first part has some fixed value in an external currency. The other part is the rest. And that works as long as the rest has some value.

However here we are talking about programming errors in the implementation. And Solidity/Ethereum is really at fault.

How do you implement a contract in Ethereum where a certain thing happens the price of Ethereum drops below XXXX dollars? You can (as this is what MakerDAO and others are doing) only it is silly complex to do.

It really should not be.

Post reply on HN